AfterDawn: News

Finnish BitTorrent link site busted

Finnish authorities have today seized the computers of the administrators of Finnish site Finreactor which was one of the largest sites in Finland listing links to copyrighted materials in BitTorrent network.

According to sources, National Bureau of Investigation (Keskusrikospoliisi) raided the admins' homes today and seized all the computer equipment and storage media for further investigation, but released the suspects shortly after the raid. The site itself has been down since early hours of today. Site had over 37,000 registered members and had links to more than 6,000 pirated releases on BitTorrent network. Additionally, the forums of the site boasted a large number of links to releases in other P2P networks, most notably in eDonkey network.



Apparently the NBI acted after it received a request from Finnish copyright associations, including the BSA and Teosto (the Finnish equivalent of RIAA).

Source: National Bureau of Investigation (link in Finnish)

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 14 Dec 2004 4:05

• Previous article

• American schools signing up for legal music services

• Next article

• The emperor's new name

• 8 comments

• Jarpo

  Teosto smells.

  14.12.2004 06:36 #1

• MXGzX

  National Bureau of Investigation (Keskusrikospoliisi)

  14.12.2004 09:57 #2

• Janiqq

  R.I.P. finreactor :( .... Perkele sentään ...

  14.12.2004 11:18 #3

• saaret

  Teosto is finnish composers' copyright society, protecting the rights of its individual songwriting members, equivalent of ASCAP for example.. quite far from the RIAA, which presents the record industry and their greedy interests. just correcting this mistake :)

  14.12.2004 11:28 #4

• Jarpo

  But Finnish Teosto sucks money from those people who buy
  
  - empty DVD-R discs, even if you don't store music or movies to them
  - MP3-players
  - set top boxes / digital tv boxes which are equipped with hard disk
  
  So for "regular guy" Teosto and RIAA are something similar, greedy.

  14.12.2004 22:14 #5

• prosurfer

  Jarpo, Teosto is only the organization collecting the money from empty media sales, they have no authority. Ministry of Education appointed them to do the dirty work.

  15.12.2004 22:53 #6

• PavelP

  National Bureau of Investigation has said that Teosto has NOT behind this case, only BSA Finland. (Source Iltasanomat 16.12.2004). bad thing for those you were in Finreactor users anyway.

  17.12.2004 00:15 #7

• Ghostdog

  Quote:National Bureau of Investigation Heh... that sounds weird, I´m so used to hearing just "keskusrikospoliisi".

  20.12.2004 09:12 #8